This woman-shaped piece of meat has made the crucial mistake of reporting her rape. She will be punished.

Here’s an interesting change. After all these stories of women being prosecuted or threatened with legal action for pressing rape charges, today we have a story of a woman being prosecuted for not pressing rape charges.

You all remember that back in 2005, a 17-year-old girl was actually prosecuted for reporting her rape. Not only prosecuted but convicted of a crime — and all because the state decided it couldn’t prove the case against her attackers.

And with the Duke case, as you all know, every sexist twit this side of the Andromeda galaxy took to the intertubes to demand that the victim in that case also be prosecuted, again for the “crime” of reporting a crime that the state decided it couldn’t prove.

And in the De Anza case, a teenage girl who was gang-raped by a sports team was publicly castigated for, again, reporting a crime that the state decided it couldn’t prove.

Anybody see a pattern?

The increasingly loud message is clear: if you’re raped, you’d sure as hell better not press charges. If the state can’t prove the case, or even if the prosecutors decide they don’t believe you, you could go to jail! And shit, even if there’s airtight evidence, like a goddamn videotape of the assault, the defense attorneys will still crucify you and make your life a living hell and very possibly succeed in getting your attackers acquitted. Definitely better not to press charges.

Now, in a fascinating development, an Air Force woman who has obviously taken this message to heart is being court-martialed for not pressing charges.

The woman in question explained her decision this way: “Under enormous stress and after consultation with the legal office, I made the decision not to testify — the pressure of the judicial process was too much for me, and I felt like no one was looking out for my interests.”

In other words, the crucifixion party had started up and she decided to opt out. The usual crap was already being slung: she was promiscuous, she wore skin-tight clothes, she asked for it, yadeyadeyade. Damn if I blame her for bailing. She’d already been raped once and didn’t feel like repeating the experience. (Note, by the way, that this mess is going on in North Carolina, home of the Duke travesty. Not a good state for rape victims. )

But clearly she erred by not fully apprehending the rape zeitgeist, which is that if you’re raped, you’d better not report it at all. If you do, you will be punished. One way or another.

It’s a lose-lose scenario. If you press on with the case, you’ll be destroyed. If you don’t press on, you’ll be destroyed. The only people who don’t seem to be getting destroyed in all this is the men who are committing the goddamn rapes.

I’m reminded of the Catch-22 we saw with the street attack case, where the women who defended themselves and their friend were sent to jail. Sent to jail! And yet if a woman doesn’t fight back, that’s automatically proof that she asked for it, whatever “it” is.

I think the key here is to be found in that recent ruling that the word “rape” cannot be uttered in a rape trial. It doesn’t exist. There’s no such thing as rape anymore. There’s just “sex,” and a world full of lying sluts.

They’re trying to turn the clock back, kids. This is the patriarchy, fangs bared and poison dripping, ready to take back what it’s lost. For thirty-five years women have been talking about sovereignty over their own bodies, and the big P is pushing back. Time to get the meat under control. The MRAs are the vanguard, and every moment that they’re not whacking off to porn movies where women are abused and degraded and made to wear toilet seats around their necks, they’re trolling blogs and sending letters to the editor and spreading the word that women are sluts and liars, that rape never happens, that feminism has gone too far, gotta get the uppity bitches back in line. Fuck that noise.

Violet, I thought you should know that this story was the subject of deeply engaged discussion (between myself, my husband, and the singer’s wife – a lovely woman) on the Lamb of God tour bus Wednesday night at Ozzfest in Columbus, OH. Just in case your ears were burning and it seemed like the discussion was emanating from some supremely unlikely digs.

That bit of trivia aside, the rage I feel in response to this story (not to mention the recent hacktavism of the United Front of Fuckwads) is beyond what I can hope to articulate, much less constructively act upon, but I’m trying. I read you for lots of reasons, not least among them is that your human rage is so gorgeously, constructively, coherently intact as to be inspiring even to someone who deliberately walked away from so much rage (separatism, etc.) You’re a warrior and, when it matters, also a comedian (really, the Cheetos bit!), which is a damn fine combination of traits among kickass feminists. Rock on.

What was said was a tangle of tangential bits** on everything from the case in question here (outrage and incredulity expressed all around) to the material in Cindy’s (the aforementioned wife of singer) feminist literary theory class which she said I should crash sometime, forget all my issues about being in exile from academia. Then I took sappy pics of her and the hub, and they took pictures of us which I will eventually post if I can stop obsessing about the recent bullcrap misogynist hacktavism for long enough to accomplish the task. (I really have fallen down the rabbit-hole of all that this week. Which is, I am sure, partly what they want. Fuckers.)

Thanks to Lexia for the relevant info above! I believe I have just identified a more constructive outlet for my feminist rage.

__

** A more complete accounting would have required the presence of a recorder. (I was a tad inebriated, ‘k?)

When you point the finger at someone and say they are lying, you are pointing 3 back at yourself -(try this – it works).

Conspiracy theories abound about all sorts, but this one is real – rape is being obliterated as a crime, as a word, and as a cause for psychological harm and it’s after-effects are worse almost than the rape. Fuck that shit. We won’t let them do it.

my daughter was gang raped by members of 50 Cents G unit at a college campus near our house. It was in daylight and there were witnesses. She is mentally “slow” and was a total victim. She said no. She cried and begged. She was brutally raped and sodomized. They had lawyers there before she got out of the ER. She did everything right. 50 cent had lawyers, the college had lawyers, and the college is the “company” in this “company town” She was rebrutalized on the streets of the town and in the local media because she couldn’t prove she didn’t consent and she is a bad speaker and slow so the DA didn’t want to risk becoming what we now see happens to DA who at least try to give rape victims a say in court, a Mike Niphong. There was intimidation and they hired a PI to try and find us(G unit did) they were black. She is white. We are not poor. They are really really rich as is the college. We had no chancve–they told us to get over it. I nearly died while waiting on the HIV test results. I have never recovered and now have a heart condition. My daughter never reclaimed her self-esteem when no one believed her. This is so disgusting. We need at least 50 % women in charge of this world.

“Conspiracy theories abound about all sorts, but this one is real – rape is being obliterated as a crime, as a word, and as a cause for psychological harm and it’s after-effects are worse almost than the rape. Fuck that shit. We won’t let them do it.”

Then if we, you, other, Mean that,

then lets Stop making ‘excuses’ under Culture

lets Stop making ‘excuses’ under Religion

lets Stop TOLERATING being sold out by women

who support porn, support misogyny in religion and stop cowering and caving in

to the accusations of racism and imperialism every time we stand UP,

and stop allowing the supporters of misogyny under race, culture, religion, political ideology
to COLONIZE and infiltrate boards and in doing so silencing those revolutionaries who dare take a stand…

or

GET USE TO MORE TOLERANCE OF RAPE.

Women are being SOLD OUT, by leftists [oh HELL YEA], by right wingers, by nationalists, by religious holy warriors, by campaigns, by elites, lawyers, you name it,

we are being sold out.

as Human Beings–either we fight, and I do mean FIGHT, or we lose,

and our daughters lose.

Its either ZERO TOLERANCE or sitting on the fence.

When I see women bearing breasts to protest war yet won’t dare even speak up and DEMAND ZERO TOLERANCE TO RELIGIOUS MISOGYNY,

Thank you for this post which illustrates how abusers use our gains to punish women. DV abusers use injunctions and unindited rapists clothed respectably use the rape laws.

But on the other hand, every rapist unnamed, every child left in an abusive household because the mother returns again and again, increases the threat of violence and actual violence to all women including you, including me.